Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the initiative to create a Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) in September 2013 during a speech in Kazakhstan addressed to the states of Central Asia. By late 2015, that proposal had gained a broad array of support across the entire Eurasian continent. Many states in the region signed official documents for cooperating with China on the construction of the SREB, or else included the SREB project in bilateral political documents.
Chinese and Russian leaders met in Moscow on May 8, 2015 to sign a Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on cooperation in aligning efforts to build the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Silk Road Economic Belt. They decided that the goal of such linkage would be the formation of a Common Space on the entire Eurasian continent. All of the EAEU states later expressed support for the initiative.
This report, prepared by a leading Chinese expert on the issue, aims to illuminate fully the Chinese approach to a comprehensive Eurasian partnership. It will also present what Chinese scholars view as the goals, objectives, and areas of cooperation for Eurasian states, as well as the long-term priorities and anticipated results of such cooperation.
About the author:
Li Xin is Director of the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies, Professor at the Institute for Economic Comparative Studies, Shanghai Institute for International Studies
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